In the past I have taken a look at a nice variety of small form factor PCs. Out of all of them I was most impressed with the NUC. Not only did it have the smallest form factor, but it also performed extremely well. It really opened up my eyes to the possibility that only gamers and enthusiasts will be sporting full or mid-sized PCs in the future. We already see a lot of people moving to just using a laptop or even a tablet. So beyond the NUC I was really curious about other NUC like PCs like the Brix from Gigabyte. Well today I have the chance to check out the Brix GB-BXA8-5557, an AMD based PC that has a similar footprint to Intel’s NUC. Let’s see what it is all about and find out if it can hold its own in the performance benchmarks compared to the others.

I sometimes feel a little like a broken record when talking about LANRigs. While we have been doing them for years here at LanOC, over the past few years the small form factor builds have really come into their own. The introduction of parts has helped a lot and frankly I think a lot of people are starting to see that you can get amazing performance out of a small PC if it is built right. This makes taking your PC to LANs much easier and even for those of you who don’t do that, they take up a lot less space in your office. Well when Asus recently introduced a new all in one PC called the ROG GR8 I was a little surprised. They were promising a PC that is a fraction of the size of a normal SFF gaming rig but you could get it with an i7 and a dedicated video card. I had to check it out. Over the past few months we have been lucky enough to pack it up and use it at multiple LANs, today I’m going to talk a little about the GR8 and our experience with it. While we are doing that I’m going to try to keep our only GR8 (Great) reference to right here in the introduction.

Those of you who come around often, will have most likely figured out that I have a thing for small form factor PCs. I have been building small PCs with big video cards for years, even before Mini-ITX became the norm. Trying to pack the fastest hardware into the smallest possible case is challenging, but also rewarding when you don’t have to break your back carrying a huge PC into LANs. I know a few of you have been catching on to this, I have been seeing LAN rigs showing up a lot on my Facebook and at the LAN. Well when Intel launched their NUC I couldn’t wait to get my hands on one, well my wife just happened to win one at a LAN. So today I’m going to check out what the NUC is all about and put it together with some cool hardware from Kingston and a Harmony Smart Keyboard from Logitech to help put it to use as an HTPC.

Every time I cover something Mini-ITX I talk about how great it is that we can build these monster PCs in such a small form factor. Even so, considering how sensitive they are to heat and bad wire management it’s not for everyone. If you don’t know about every single part on the market it can be a little harder to pick out your components for a LAN rig as well. You don’t know what will fit with what, larger builds are a lot more forgiving on all of these things. Well MSI might just have the answer to all of those issues. They have put together a Mini ITX barebones for gamers who know they want a small easy to carry rig. Their Nightblade comes with a variation on their Z97i Gaming AC motherboard that I recently reviewed, a case, slim DVD drive, and 600 watt power supply. You just need to bring your SSD/Hard drive, CPU, heatsink, and video card. The question is, does the Nightblade make things easier and also how well does it perform. Today I’m going to take a closer look and put it through a few tests to see what it’s all about.

As someone who tries to make it out to as many LAN events as possible, small but powerful LAN rigs have been saving my back for years. Even though to some the LAN scene has been shrinking, the industry has really started to take notice of the small LAN rigs recently. We have seen smaller console like builds from boutique builders and Valves recent interest in steam boxes has gotten everyone in a frenzy as well. Because of that, I was happy to see MSI dive into the Mini ITX gaming market with their new GTX 760 Gaming ITX video card and the ZZ87I Gaming AC motherboard. Given our previous experience with similar products, MSI sent over the motherboard and video card combo to see what we thought about the two. Let’s see what they are all about.

Now that you know a little more about all of the parts that are going into Lunchbox 3, today we are going to go over how well the installation went and then put it all to the test in a few benchmarks. This is where we can finally see how the part choices work out and talk about any regrets I might have with them. Of course I’m most excited to see how it all performs. Then this coming weekend I can finally put it to good use at a LAN.

In my first article about our project build Lunchbox 3, I covered everything that controls how fast the build is. Today I will be following up with all of the parts that support. That includes the power supply, case, and cooling components. These are all critical parts to your PC, but things like the CPU, motherboard, and video card generally get all of the attention. Today we will find out all about why space was such a concern when picking our previous components. Let’s dig in and see the rest of what Lunchbox 3 will consist of.

Today starts a small series of articles about our latest project build. If you haven’t noticed, LanOC staff takes a very big interest in LAN events including hosting our own in Northwest Ohio twice a year. Anyone who has packed all of their equipment up to come out to a LAN or two will completely understand why I prefer to build a PC specifically for coming out to events. My main PC the “Fridge” is literally larger than a mini fridge. It is a complete monster and is extremely eye catching, but when it takes two people and a large vehicle to get it out to an event you really start to wish you had something smaller. This is why for the past few years I have been using my “Lunchbox” builds at any event where I just want to kick back and enjoy myself. This project build is for Lunchbox 3, over the next few days I will go over its components and then show off its performance.

A couple of months ago a friend came to me and asked about upgrading his machine. With his current rig running a Core2Duo, 3gb of RAM, Windows Vista 32bit, 2 Nvidia 9600GT's and a spinning hard disk. What he wanted was something that would boot quickly, handle his four monitors for stock trading and be an overall better PC. We had some work to do.

When you think of Sapphire you think of video cards and more recently motherboards. Along with expanding into the motherboard market, today, Sapphire introduced its newest product the Edge-HD Mini PC. With a dual core Intel Atom D510 and a Nvidia ION 2 GPU the Edge HD could be a perfect HTPC or PC for light use. The Edge HD gets its name from its thin size; everything is packed in a form factor that is smaller than the average home router. Considering its contents, the size is very impressive!

With internal Blu-Ray players starting to become normal and prices becoming very reasonable it’s no surprise that Plextor would look at other options to continue to grow their product line. They have had an external Blu-Ray drive for some time, but it would be hard to call it portable. With the introduction of the PX-B120U they could finally call their external Blu-Ray drive portable. Just like the PX-610U it doesn’t require external power making it much easier to take with you on the go. Let’s take a look and see if the PX-B120U is as portable as it looks.

If you've been an avid reader of LanOC Reviews, the name Killer 2100 should be somewhat familiar. And if you follow hardware news and press releases, then you're probably as excited about this review as we are. Maybe it's because we've been the victims of automatic updates killing in-game performance too many times, or perhaps it's the idea of being able to control and prioritize applications that appeals so much to us as LAN party hosts. Whatever the reason, we've been covering BigFoot Networks and their Killer cards for quite some time now, anxiously awaiting our chance to try one out for ourselves. With the launch of the new Killer 2100 card, we finally received one to put to the LanOC test.

It's easy for us those of us that are PC enthusiasts to forget that not everyone has the inclination or know-how to build their own custom gaming computer. Most people just people just want to plug it in and play games, one of the reasons consoles do so well. But the current consoles are starting to show their age, which makes the PC more and more attractive. If you walk into the local brick and mortar, there's all kinds of computers, but none are all that good for gaming. This is where a good custom builder like CyberPower comes to the rescue. They sent along one of their "Back to School" builds to take a look at. Let see what they've got to offer

We have taken a look at Shuttles small form factor barebones systems before, today we have the chance to take a look at their new J series chassis that is made specifically for budget builds. With the motherboard, PSU, and Case packaged together it’s no doubt that they have a low priced solution, but who would be interested? Outside of the obvious uses, I can’t help but wonder how good of a foundation that this will make for a budget LAN rig. I am going to use this as a base to build a rig that Adam will be testing more next week for our upcoming gaming on the go week. Let's jump in

With hard drive capacities continuing to grow and the popularity of Blu-Ray movies also growing the demand for Blu-Ray players and burners will continue to rise therefore driving the price down. Today I have the chance to take a look at the first Blu-Ray burner to come into LanOC Reviews, the PX940SA from Plextor. With a 12x Blu-Ray burn speed it should be quick, but will it be fast?

When the PlayStation 3 first launched it was not only marketed as a game console but also a Blu-Ray Disc player which at the time may have justified its higher price when compared to its competitor consoles. But what once seemed like a a great value when compared to other Blu-Ray players which couldn't play video games may not seem so great now. Lite-On introduced an affordable Blu-Ray option to the PC, a gaming platform as old as the industry itself. For less than the price of a new retail PS3 title, you can now add Blu-Ray capabilities to your PC with the iHOS104. Today Lite-On has sent us one to test.

Cluster is an issue that any entertainment enthusiast can sympathisize with, especially gamers. The requirement for all the equipment involved in the modern gaming PC plus three cores console systems on the market, each with their own cords and controllers, trying to switch between mediums can truly be a pain. The frustration is that much more for gamers in the press world, attempting to capture screenshots and videos between all these mediums. If only there were some way to combine them all in one place, so TVs wouldn't need switched, cords wouldn't need swapped, and capturing a gaming experience wasn't such a chore. AVerMedia has answered the call with their Video Capture Card, and has sent us a sample to help spread the word.

A while back I took a look at a BluRay drive from Plextor, a well known manufacture in the disc drive market. Today I have the chance to take a look at another BluRay drive from them. This time we will be looking at the B320SA with a speed of 8X in comparison to the 6x speed of the B310SA I reviewed before. 2x doesn't seem like that drastic of a change but will it make a noticeable difference? Read more to find out.

Memory these days comes in just about every speed, shape, color and price. Recently we have taken a look at memory with LED's, and even memory with a platinum finish. Today I'm taking a look at a triple channel kit from Patriot from their Viper Series, designed specifically for i7 rigs. We are going to find out how well they performed compared to the kits we have tested in the past. Will the Viper Series come out on top?

In the ram market there isn't any one manufacture who is top dog, but there are a few that stand out. One of the few manufactures that targets enthusiasts and benchmarkers is OCZ. They entered the memory market in August of 2000 hoping to make the best high performance memory; over nine years later they have grown to be one of the most successful enthusiast ram manufactures on the market. Recently they have been known for their SSD's but their memory is what started it all. Today I have the chance to take a look at one of their 1600Mhz Triple channel kits for the i7 platform. Read on to see how it performed.